Indigo dye and American cotton textile
Tinte índigo y tejido de algodón americano
- Date
- c. 4000 BCE · confidence high
- Place
- Huaca Prieta, Chicama Valley, La Libertad, Peru
- Credited to
- Pre-ceramic communities of the northern coast of Peru
- Field
- Tools
What it is
Cotton textiles (Gossypium barbadense) dyed blue with indigotin, the oldest use of indigo in the world, 1,500 years before Egypt. It requires fermentation and chemical reduction of the pigment.
Peruvian cotton is an independent domestication from the Asian species.
What it led to
- The Andean textile tradition as the main artistic and record-keeping medium (khipu)
- Domestication of Peruvian cotton and fishing nets that sustained the urbanism of Caral
- Vat-dye chemistry